Good Grief

Meandering musical hour of delightful schadenfreude

Gone Rogue’s likeable, funeral-set musical might start off in a subdued atmosphere of deep sorrow, but by the end of the show most of the mourners have ended up half naked, high on hash cookies or reeling from shocking family revelations. Using a family gathering to expose simmering tensions has been done many times before, but this is still great fun, creatively foul-mouthed and full of nice touches -- from a horrendously irritating voicemail recording to a sex-mad French teacher. Sarah Moir is wonderfully deadpan as the lesbian lover of Tilly, daugher of the deceased (a mischievous Jenny Deacon), and Sophie Owen is convincingly neurotic as Charlotte, Tilly’s sister -- her expletive-filled song-argument with fiancé Phil (a puffed-up Alex Clements) is a joy to hear.

It’s one of several good musical numbers, but others are rather unmemorable. And if only the cast would project instead of sometimes almost muttering their lines, we’d find the whole thing a lot funnier and stronger. The plot meanders and there are undoubted longueurs, but on the whole it’s an hour of delightful schadenfreude.

Three siblings come together at the wake of their estranged father's funeral where wine flows and social etiquette goes to pot. With lovers' tiffs, hash cookies and a horny cougar, years of suppressed tensions bubble to the surface with explosive consequences. Touching yet fast-paced musical comedy from last year's…